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One of the most important things you can do in your chosen field--or in the pursuit of any goal you wish to achieve in your life--is have the humility to let go of your ego and pride and be willing to listen to those you can learn from. From there, you have to follow up on that learning by acting on what you've learned. In other words, you have to be coachable.

In his bookPractice Perfect, Doug Lemov makes the following point:

“People get feedback all the time … This means that they probably practice ‘taking’ feedback quite a bit – they learn to get better at nodding with eye contact, making their tone free of defensiveness, and taking notes even. Recipients may signal that they take feedback seriously … but this does not necessarily mean that they use feedback. Nor does it make them better at employing feedback over time. In fact, the opposite may happen. People may practice ways of taking feedback that help them avoid doing anything about it.”In other words, we all have practice being on the receiving end of feedback. From our teachers, bosses, family and friends, criticism is never easy to hear but it is a necessary part of growth. Listening to the feedback does not mean you actually hear it, and hearing it does not mean you actually apply it to get better. This takes conscious thought and a willingness to be coachable.What does it mean to be "coachable"?

Being coachable is about being aware and having the ability to open yourself to the possibility that you don't know everything. You first acknowledge that there is some skill you lack and must develop or strengthen. Next , you must take the initiative to seek one or more mentors, be they in-person mentors or virtual mentors.Here are some key characteristics of being coachable:

·Be Thankful – realize that people care enough about you to coach you and to spend their time working with you.·Be Vulnrable – you must accept and know that you are not perfect.·Be Open – ask for honest feedback, even if it is not easy to hear.·Be Intentional – work actively to be coachable and to change.·Have Faith – trust the process! Sometimes things will get worse before they get better. Often the benefits are only obvious after the change has occurred.For those who find it difficult to ask for help, who think they know it all, or who fear that admitting they need help is in some way demeaning, consider as an example a young Michael Jordan.

"I was a sponge."Before he was a professional basketball player, Michael Jordan was a North Carolina University Tar Heel, playing under coach Dean Smith. Even as a freshman, Jordan exhibited exceptional talent, but it was still a raw talent, ripe for refinement.Although Jordan had a swagger about him, he was not above listening. He was coachable. As Roland Lazenby said of Jordan in his 2013 biography Michael Jordan: The Life, "This ability to listen was among his most precious gifts. ... To his coaches, his capacity to be coached was his single most impressive attribute, beyond even the 18-year-old's spectacular physical gifts."

Smith said he "had never seen a player listen so closely to what the coaches said, and then go and do it."

"My greatest skill was being teachable," Jordan said some years later. "I was like a sponge. Even if I thought my coaches were wrong, I tried to listen and learn something."The Takeaway?

The takeaway here is that coachability is not achieved with more drills or practice of a task. That improves a skill. Coachability takes mental diligence, attention and commitment from you. Jordan opened his mind to being coachable, to learn, to humble himself enough to admit he didn't know it all. He had immense talent, but he knew he could be better.

If there is something in life at which you want to excel become coachable. Try to surround yourself with potential mentors or seek them out, and humble yourself by opening your ears and your mind to what they may have to teach you. Be intentional.

Then, after absorbing the teachings "like a sponge," don't just let them atrophy in your mind. Act on them. Allow those things that work for you to become intuitive, second nature. From there, your talents can fully blossom, and perhaps lead you to greatness.

10 Myths about Motivating People in the Workplace …and the Real TruthBehind Each MythBy Donna Suro

Spend enough time in meetings or the executive lunchroom, and you’re destined to hear your fair share of managers’ complaints about their employees. But as these leaders vent their frustrations, they’re actually looking in the wrong direction.Here’s the real truth: If employees aren’t motivated, then we should look to their managers and organizational practices. Those who dismiss their teams’ grievances can sabotage staff performance and bottom-line results.If you want your employees to perform to their best abilities, take some advice from organizational behavior expert Stephen P. Robbins, PhD, author of The Truth about Managing People (FT Press, 2007). Contrary to much of the misleading, generalized and inconsistent information found in business books, Robbins has researched human behavior and provides practical advice on what works—and what doesn’t—when managing a team. As Robbins points out, traditional workplace incentives and disincentives function as cues for employee decision-making: •• “Do ____, and you'll get a bonus.” •• “Don't do ____, or you'll get fired.” This approach discourages employees from examining the reasons why a task may or may not make sense. It forces them to make quick, intuitive decisions based on behaviors the system has historically rewarded and punished. But there are sometimes uninvited consequences.Let’s examine 10 common myths about motivation.Myth #1: People simply lack the motivation to work.If you believe this myth, think about four things that may be going on in your employees’ minds. Ask yourself:

Do your employees believe their maximum efforts will be recognized in performance appraisals?

For many employees, the response is a resounding “no.” Their skill level may be deficient, which means that no matter how hard they try, they’re unlikely to be high performers. Or, if the appraisal system assesses factors like loyalty or initiative, more effort won’t result in a better review. If employees think their best efforts will yield only a mediocre review, they will suffer from low motivation.

2. Are the rewards that employees receive the ones they want?Some people want promotions, others desire pay, and still others seek more interesting assignments. When rewards aren’t tailored to employees’ specific wants and motivating drives, then incentives are sub-optimized.

3. Do employees believe they will get the same rewards regardless of their performance?Do you have regular performance reviews to set a platform for conversation with your employees? Some people need this structure to understand what is expected of them and to know what they can do to earn better rewards. Employees are motivated by money. Very few would do the job if they were not financially compensated. On the other hand, if employees will get the same compensation regardless of good or poor work, they will not be motivated to improve. 4. Do employees believe a good performance appraisal will lead to organizational rewards?When pay is allocated on seniority or special relationships, employees perceive the performance-reward relationship to be weak and demotivating. To motivate employees, do what’s necessary to strengthen performance-reward relationships. Make it obvious that specific behaviors will be rewarded, and always keep your word to maintain credibility and morale.The Real Truth:If employees aren’t motivated, the fault lies with their managers and organizational practices—not the workers. If the performance-reward relationship is weak, motivation drops. Myth #2: Happy workers are productive workers.Everyone assumes satisfied workers are naturally more productive. This theory plays out as flexible work hours, onsite childcare and workout facilities, retirement plans and attractive workplaces. While these amenities are nice perks, they really aren’t incentives for high performance.While there is a correlation between job satisfaction and productivity, it’s actually quite minimal: between +0.14 and +0.30. Thus, no more than 9 percent—or as low as 2 percent—of the variance in output can be attributed to employee satisfaction.This is hardly enough to justify spending more money on making employees happier and more comfortable. Such benefits may contribute to employee retention, but not to productivity. Moreover, the evidence suggests that productive workers are more likely to be happy workers, rather than the reverse.Productivity leads to job satisfaction. If you do a good job, you feel positive about your efforts. This, in turn, fuels your energy to accomplish more. Higher productivity should also be recognized with praise, increased pay and the opportunity to earn even greater rewards.The Real Truth:Evidence suggests productive workers are more likely to be happy workers, rather than the reverse.Direct your efforts toward helping employees become more productive. Find ways to increase their training, improve job design, provide better tools and resources, and remove barriers that may impede them from doing a first-rate job.Myth #3: Tell employees to do their best, and let them find their own path.A mountain of evidence shows us that people perform best when they’re given goals and a clear job description: •Specific goals increase performance.•Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance.•Feedback leads to higher performance.When you give an assignment with instructions to “do your best,” you aren’t providing enough specificity. Employees perform better when they know what needs to be done, the outcomes you seek, and how much effort they’ll need to expend to achieve results.The Real Truth:A large percentage of employees believe they lack specific goals at work. Clear, challenging goals, accompanied by feedback, set the stage for higher output.Myth #4: People want to set their own goals.In spite of the logic behind participatory management, there’s little evidence to show that goals set in partnership, between employee and manager, are superior to those unilaterally assigned by the boss. Why wouldn’t people do better with goals they help set? The explanation may lie in the reality of workplace conditions. For participation to work:•There must be adequate time to give input.•Issues must be relevant to employees’ interests.•Employees must have adequate knowledge and skills to share their insights.•The workplace culture must support employee involvement.These conditions are sorely lacking in many workplaces, despite management’s best intentions. In addition, some people don’t want the responsibilities that come with participation. They prefer to be told what to do and let the boss do the worrying.The Real Truth:Participation is no sure means for improving employee performance.Myth #5: Happiness leads to “flow” experiences.When you are deeply involved in your work, nothing else seems to matter. You lose track of time—a state known as flow. Smart managers know that flow is a particularly fertile work condition.Flow experiences are periods of deep concentration during which workers report feelings of gratitude and satisfaction. Can managers take steps to create this state? Absolutely.

To enter into flow, employees must be:

•Challenged •Goal-directed (with detail)•Provided with honest feedback to include constructive criticism so employees will learn to move forward from their failures. Someone who is always told they are doing a "great job" when they are not performing well are being misled and it may end with employee dissatisfaction or lack of motivation to improve. •Allowed total concentration and creativityFlow will materialize only when managers give their employees sufficiently challenging tasks and the necessary time to apply creativity without distractions and interruptions.

The Real Truth: Flowis most likely to be experienced at work and requires periods of intense concentration, without distractions. Managers can ensure that working conditions allow such concentration and minimal interruptions.Myth #6: Feedback needs to address personal qualities. Telling employees that they’re doing a “good job” isn’t good enough. Neither are comments about attitudes or efforts. Feedback must be specific and about behaviors, not personal attributes. Define what is a “good job”. No matter how upset you may be, limit feedback to job-related issues, and never criticize someone personally because of an inappropriate action. This is counterproductive, as it evokes strong emotional reactions that bury actual feedback. You must however point out those actions that are inappropriate without feeling like you are criticizing the employee personally. For example, let’s say an employee did not spend adequate time on a project. Telling the employee they are “lazy” would be personal. Pointing out the employee did not spend adequate time on the project (as laid out in your clear job description/review) is simply helpful feedback that allows the employee to do better the next time.Some employers want so much to be liked by their employees that they are unwilling to give this important feedback. These same employers may get to the point of total frustration by the lack of performance of this same employee down the road that they let them go. This employee would much rather have been given the chance to find success in their position through honest feedback rather than always be told they are “doing great” only to be let go when the employers frustration level passes the point of no return. The Real Truth: Feedback is effective when it is specific to behaviors and impersonal. Feedback should be descriptive, rather than judgmental or evaluative. Myth #7: Reward behaviors that indicate high performance.Unfortunately, it’s easy—and often tempting—to measure the wrong indicators. For example, the number of phone calls an employee places doesn’t measure customer relationships or sales. And when managers reward individual accomplishments, yet consistently say they’re team-focused, employees take notice. When you discuss the importance of quality work, pay special attention to employees who exceed their production goals, but churn out below-average work. Be sure to send the right message.The Real Truth: Managers routinely measure behaviors they’re trying to discourage and fail to reward the ones they actually want. You get what you reward.If you want quality, reward it—and avoid rewarding quantity.Myth #8: Reward absolute results.We know that employees make comparisons and look at relative rewards. They evaluate what they bring to their jobs, in terms of experience, effort, education and competence, with the rewards they receive: salary, pay raises and recognition. Employees compare their situations to those of friends, colleagues, competitors or prior jobs. They assess how equitably they’re being treated. Your team will likely be motivated when members feel they are equitably rewarded for their contributions. When they feel under-rewarded, they become angry, and this perceived inequity can lead to absences, reduced productivity, fudging on expenses and/or requests for a raise. The Real Truth:People compare their rewards to those that others receive.As amanager, you cannot overlook this fact, and you need to be sensitive to the perceptions of relative rewards.Myth #9: Employees should be motivated to the “right thing” because they want to, not because I am making the do it.Some employers think that setting clear goals, expecting job performance to be met, providing consistent and honest feedback and financial rewards based on performance is somehow “making” their employee behave. Perhaps a different perspective will help those employees that fall into this category. As an employee you are helping your employee grow by providing performance reviews and you are providing security by setting clear goals and job performance expectations. The Real Truth:Unless you are managing self-motivated volunteers who are working for no compensation because of their desire to add value to an organization, you will need to manage your employees by motivating them with clear goals, performance expectations and compensation that is related to their performance. Myth #10: You can systematically apply motivation strategies to produce high performance. Job success depends on having adequate support resources. No matter how motivated employees may be, they won’t perform well if they lack equipment, workspace, supplies, skills or others’ cooperation. They will quickly lose motivation, no matter the incentives or rewards offered.As you determine why a particular worker is performing poorly, examine the work environment to see if it’s supportive. Employee performance is a combination and interaction of: •Ability •Motivation•OpportunityThe Real Truth: Regardless of motivation, employee performance will suffer if the work environment does not allow for growth in their field to include further training and coaching, systems set in place for proper motivation as discussed in this article and the opportunity to be rewarded for better performance. The mostwilling and able employee may face obstacles that constrain performance.